Twenty-fifth annual report of the Suffolk Lunatic Asylum : December, 1862.

  • Suffolk Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
[1862]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Twenty-fifth annual report of the Suffolk Lunatic Asylum : December, 1862. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    4/36 (page 4)
    been admitted more than during the year 1861, seven lees have been discharged, and the deaths have fallen by twenty. This diminished obituary, together with the proportional diminution in sickness which is necessarily its background, affords full illustration of the general health of the patients throughout the year : more especially when the ages and the more than usually unsatisfactory state in which many of late have been admitted, are observed. It would be unjust to the Asylum reputation to omit repeated reference to the neg¬ lected causes previous to admission, which so quickly tend to swell the catalogue of deaths. The antecedents in this large class of persons are strictly speaking prochronic, i. e. entirely previous to the period in which we have any opportunity of arresting disease or of prolonging life. Our fears have to a great extent been realized by the clause in the Poor Law Removal Act, which by throwing the charge of the patient’s maintenance from off the parish to which he belongs and on to the Common fund of the Union, has increased the number of hopeless or unpromising admissions. Very few recent cases have been received throughout the year : and it must be a subject of regret that the character of a hospital should to such an extent be merged into that of a house of detention and safe keeping. A large amount of work has been done by the patients throughout the year in the ordinary requirements of the House, besides many additional improvements noticed at the last visit of the Commissioners in Lunacy. Though the Asylum is an old building, we are fully prepared by compar¬ ative estimates to prove that the repairs are not extraordinary when compared even with those of some newly built Asylums: and it would be strange indeed if as much alacrity should not be shewn in contributing to the repairs of an old house as in subscribing towards the erection of a new one ; and as now the solitary possessor of almost a life-long interest in all connected with the present character and the future